The other feature that is pretty sweet in this Empires game are formations. Formations give you special battlefield advantages against your enemy that apply to your entire army. This could mean a bonus to your attack faster than quicksilver speed or a healing regeneration Bonus. Formations have a time limit, but if you have more than one equipped you can activate a new one when you need it.

And that’s the game in a nutshell – with all the familiar features Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors fans love mixed with a nice layer of strategy that is great if you can get your head around how it affects the big picture.

In addition to the campaign mode with the usual historical scenarios based on key battles in Japan’s history, there’s also a free mode (stripped of all the strategy elements) and a create a character mode that lets you build your own lord that you can then play in both game modes. While this mode isn’t as deep as it could be, at least the option is there.

Unfortunately SW2: Empires isn’t as feature rich in the multiplayer department on either the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 2. There’s the usual cooperative play in the two available game modes, but no online support on either platform. These kinds of games are perfect for online co-op play, so it’s kind of a disappointment that you can’t play online. Another complaint is with the graphics on both platforms. While the Xbox 360 version looks a tick better than the PS2 version, it should look a lot better than it does.

Graphically SW2: Empires could be better. We’re in a new generation of hardware here but this latest game just doesn’t do a very good job of taking advantage of it on the Xbox 360.. There is support for 1080p but there’s only a marginal improvement over the PS2 version.

Samurai Warriors 2: Empires is a solid game with slight changes to the formula introduced in Dynasty Warriors 5: Empires. The game is good enough for what it is supposed to do, but KOEI really needs to start making more dramatic changes with these yearly releases across the board. But for fans that want a lot of combat and a little strategy, this Empires game serves its intended purpose..